Archers thread #182: The Shit hits the Am! Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd be delighted to oblige your employer by cleaning up sewage spills without proper training or equipment in place of your normal duties, or other unusual views.

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For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, @DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have - BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Credit for the title goes to @echt. Can't think of anything much to say about current storylines. Credulity is strained to its limit on many fronts, unfortunately, but there are a few nuggets in the slurry. I did enjoy hearing Natasha's outrage that Fallon is doing obvious, sensible things at The Bull even though it might hit Terum. I thought Natasha was supposed to be an entrepreneur!

Over to you!

Perhaps an employment lawyer can advise but is there any requirement to make them apply if one role is being made redundant?

in big companies I thought that was the case but unsure for small companies

And was it meant to be Friday they were doing the ringing? If so, why was no one at work?

I assumed it was Friday as we heard them begin to ring. Bellringers do tend to be an older demographic so wouldn't necessarily be working. Perhaps Neil rearranged his shifts?

Did I imagine it, or did Martin Gibson threaten Neil with the sack?

Honestly, if ever a character cried out to be fed to the pigs ... though he'd probably give them indigestion.

I don't insist on only eating organically produced meat but I'd be very wary of pork from a beast that had eaten Gibson.

You didn't imagine it - Emma directly challenged him on it.

He did and Emma made sure everyone else had heard it. Then he huffed and puffed and left.

tbf martyn Gibson had some valid points. That bloody bike bell was doing my head in

just all round a bit panto villain in delivery

maybe I’m out of touch but this just doesn’t seem realistic at all. Particularly the ‘for clarrie Grundy, and my mum’. One redundancy due to a badly run business doesn’t seem a great basis for the protest.

I'm surprised the rewilding project wasn’t impacted?

Perhaps it would be another purpose for beavers' dams - sieving human excrement from the Am.

More TA on Feedback re Ramadan - far more mild mannered people (all women) this time. Phew! From about 14:12.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002909t

Well, that was a necessary corrective! Thank God for the woman who said she was ashamed to be numbered amongst last week’s lot.

We live next door to the village church and if the bells were ringing for 10 hours straight we would simply have to leave for the day. Even with doors and windows shut they are loud!

Would be even worse with Emma Grundy standing outside your door ringing that sodding bell

When did septuagenarians Pat and Tony become regulars on the cricket team? (shouldn’t they be milking cows!). It seems really odd that the cricket scenes all seem to involve Lynda, Pat, Tony…. Vince, rather than people capable of playing. Our local cricket team starts playing in 3 weeks’ time.

Martyn Gibson sounds deranged.

I live near a church with 6 bells, which has historically been popular with visiting campanologists. They’ve recently put 100’s of student hutches nearby so the weekly 2 hour evening sessions have had to stop as have most of the weekend ones. It’s taken me a few years to notice, so I clearly just used to blank it out.

We used to live over the road to the church and Thursday night was bell-ringing practice. The standard was pretty patchy. You could always tell when they had a new recruit or when they were learning a new peal. Practice sessions used to go on for a couple of hours but thankfully on Sunday mornings they only rang for 30 mins.

When did septuagenarians Pat and Tony become regulars on the cricket team? - this was the reality of the Ambridge cricket team. Scrabbling about to field enough players, encouraging women to play, youngsters (Tilly Button springs to mind), pensioners, anyone really - happy to get enough players to nets to have a team to pick. They idea that they can afford to kick out former stalwarts seems rather fanciful, the suggestion that they might pay people to play feels laughable - a complete rewriting of what the Ambridge cricket team actually is.

Also kicking them out at this time of year seems stupid too

i suggest some chickens will come home to roost and Freddie will learn a lesson about being steam rollered by his sister

Madcats
When did septuagenarians Pat and Tony become regulars on the cricket team?

Tony was a regular until he retired from playing in 2014 and became an umpire instead; we know that Tim Stimpson at least knew this, because as recently as last November he wrote a scene in which Tony was worrying about whether he was up to umpiring in the higher league to which Ambridge has been promoted. It's not at all surprising that Nick Warburton didn't know it, though: he doesn't do continuity, he does 75 minute plays loosely set in somewhere called Ambridge and with characters who have names coincident with those of characters in The Archers.

Pat took up playing cricket (as opposed to going along as a spectator) in 2022 when there were so few people in Ambridge prepared to play regularly that Tracy was unable to field a team in the league and was forced to withdraw from it and run a veterans' team instead.

They have done really well since then: from no team in 2022 to promotion in 2024 is quite a progression. And now they have so many players available that they can afford to sack some – while at the same time so few that they need to bribe others to play. It's garbage.

I knew Pat hasn’t been playing very long yet the conversation implied she’d been playing for years. And yes to Tony being umpire. I’d forgotten that. Guess he won’t be doing that either then🙄

In that case they'll need to get a new one trained up now that Bert Fry is dead and Lynda is too superior to be actively involved – she did once do an umpiring course, I think, though we have never heard her doing the job.

I'd forgotten Tony wasn't playing, so that whole sacking nonsense was indeed just that, utter nonsense. Is there really no continuity checking at all these days? One might have hoped that David Troughton would have pointed out that he's actually an umpire, not a player, but I suppose even if he had it would have created such a delay with the recordings while some fairly extensive re-writing was underaken that he'd probably have been told to get on with it.

When Pat was reminiscing about the other local villages I assumed she was thinking about going along to support Tony and Tom.

Yes it’s bizarre

maybe the twist is when Lily and Freddie realise they’ve just sacked their umpire

30 years?!??

Clarrie working for Bridge Farm? That sounds more-or-less right. She started there in about 1993 or 1994 and has been there ever since apart from one break of a few months when she was blamed exclusively for the E.coli outbreak there.

I feel very old

I had no idea Clarrie had worked there for that long.

Yes I was thinking the same, that surely Tony's actor would have noticed the blinding cricket error but was unable to make any last minute changes as there were too many follow on scenes with Pat being dropped as well. They really need to be doing better with the continuity checking.